


with blood on your cheek (we’re marching to war, bright eyes)

by mouseymightymarvellous



Series: run baby run [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Darcy's main language is sarcasm and music, Gen, How do you computer?, I've no idea, She and JARVIS are gonna be best buds, So please pretend this makes any sense whatsoever, Tony Stark Feels, if a bit twitchy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 13:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7847260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ops require intel. Unfortunately for Darcy, the best source of intel on Hydra is probably the Avengers.<br/>This, she thinks, will take some thinking and a not inconsiderable amount of charm.<br/>(She could probably just ask Jane, but James is disinclined to chance running into Captain America again.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	with blood on your cheek (we’re marching to war, bright eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted to [my tumblr](http://mouseymightymarvellous.tumblr.com/post/146983393514/with-blood-on-your-cheek-were-marching-to-war).

Darcy is not a hacker.

Ok, well, she did once wipe footage of her poorly thought out joyride from a series of traffic cams. And she may or may not have changed an ex-boyfriend’s email signature to read “THE FAITHLESS ASSHOLE, JEREMY” after he cheated on her with his lab partner. And then there was that time with SHIELD and Thor and the fake ID. But really, Darcy is not a hacker. She’s just enterprising, and does what needs to be done.

She knows how to hack a government system for the same reasons she knows how to pick a lock and lift a wallet and break a nose; she learned young that the world was not kind to girls with grit itching under their skin.

But the fairly low level computer skills Darcy has picked up from friends and forums and the odd textbook aren’t going to be nearly enough to get her access to the entirety of the Shieldra files. The sheer amount of information that poured out of the Triskelion as SHIELD burned overwhelmed the internet. Every social media site buckled under the comments and shares and panic. Few organizations and even fewer individuals had the capacity to download the files in their entirety in realtime as they were released. And the most dangerous secrets were wiped from existence within hours. What remains available to the public is the sanitized remains.

James and Darcy’s two person crusade against Hydra is currently dependent on what information James can dredge up from his patchy memory and what pieces Darcy can pull from public record. While it’s a start, they need more. They need bank records and base locations and lists of power players, not just faded and bloody memories or information pulled from between the lines of company websites and blacked out mission reports.

And, because this is her life now, the only person Darcy can guarantee has all the information she needs is Tony Stark.

The internet is full of people talking about Tony Stark’s firewalls, if you know where to look for them. Darcy feels them out; she needs to run this like any other op she’s helped James with, and background on the target is always the starting point. When she finds them, the general consensus she gets from the grumbling is that Stark firewalls are impossible to break into. Or, rather, impossible to get past to anything real without physical access to SI servers.

While Darcy doesn’t doubt that James could get her into an SI facility, the point of her cyber searching is that she _isn’t_ physically involved in the fight against Hydra. (She isn’t pleased - she can take care of herself - but she’s agreed to his stipulation that he rate her hand-to-hand as “competent” before accompanying him in person rather than through cameras and over coms.) And anyways, even if they did get into SI, she figures that Stark will have the Shieldra files locked down tighter than SI’s general day-to-day business, and doubts that they’ll be accessible from anywhere but Avengers’ Tower and the Malibu house. 

If the best of the best are saying it’s impossible, that Stark’s personal work is inaccessible, Darcy isn’t even going to bother trying to brute force her way though to the Shieldra files. Darcy is clever and knows some slick tricks, but she doesn’t think that she’s twisty enough to outsmart Tony Fucking Stark at his own game. Especially without even knowing the playing field.

After almost a full twelve hours of bashing her head up against the problem, she decides to take a break.

Darcy sees best from a distance, she’s a pattern person. It’s the reason she could stick around and help Jane for as long as she did. Darcy still couldn’t tell you what three quarters of the data she helped collect and collate and analyze meant, let alone what exactly an Einstein-Rosen bridge really was, but she could tell look at a scatter graph or a string of numbers and know that this was out of place or that that was significant.

When she emerges from her cocoon of laptop and textbooks on code and empty coffee mugs, James looks up at her from where he’s been oiling his guns. “You’re still alive?”

She sighs. “Mostly, although I think some of my brain has given up the ghost and liquified. Is there anything dripping out my ear?”

He just blinks, unimpressed. “Any luck?”

“No,” Darcy groans and sprawls across the bed, “but give me another week or so and I might have something for you.” There’s something clicking into place in her mind, small puzzle pieces fitting together. She’ll have to mull over it more, but for now, food. “I’m starving and I miss clubbing. Show a girl a good time?”

James rolls his eyes at her and gestures at a stack of take-out containers on the chest, next to the outdated tv.

“Ooh! Is that sushi? And you got me spicy salmon rolls, score! All we need now is a little entertainment. Y'gonna take me dancing?”

James, with the deadly accuracy of a sniper, beans her on the head with the remote.

##

There have almost always been rumours that Stark’s robots are smart. Too smart. They’ve existed since a teenaged Tony Stark took MIT by storm.

Of course, this is the man who built a flying, weaponized suit of armour in the middle of a desert, so that’s to be expected. But even the people who know robotics and know programming say that the stories surrounding Stark’s bots should be impossible. That the people telling them must be wrong, must have misunderstood. Most labs are just barely scratching the surface of artificial intelligence, let alone creating robots with personalities capable of learning and adapting beyond a limited framework.

But the people Darcy finds who have gotten through the outer layers of SI firewalls and security swear that there is _something_ lurking in the lines of code. Something that learns how you move, and then stalks you, only to devour you whole.

Darcy watches every interview of Tony Stark she can get her hands on. Darcy reads articles in WIRED and The Times. Darcy thinks about men who disappear into the desert and walk out transformed, thinks about what a person must be made of for an avenger to be left when everything else is burned away under the sun and the sand. Darcy puts puzzle pieces together, and knows there is no way that she can beat Tony Stark, not when he’s smarter than her and more powerful than her.

And then, Darcy wonders if she needs to beat him at all.

Darcy doesn’t think she would have ever walked out of that desert an avenger. But Darcy Lewis has stood in the path of an alien god’s wrath with a dog in her arms and Darcy Lewis has laughed blindingly in the face of encroaching darkness and Darcy Lewis has held her hand out to one of the most dangerous men in the world and asked him to run away with her. Darcy Lewis may not have bones laced with iron and wrath, but she carries compassion tucked into the curve of her smile.

Darcy can’t brute force her way past Tony Stark’s firewalls, so one overcast Thursday, she takes a chance, and knocks.

At first, it [just sounds like noise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf3pc-7gfOg). Darcy can’t see what exactly changes in the code streaming across her screen, but she can sense something stirring at the sound. Then the first B minor chord strikes in, and then the second, and the first “hello” echoes out into the void.

Something large and terrible moves through the code, towards her and the Pink Floyd she’s playing. ("Is there anybody out there?”) Even though she’s safe on the other side of the screen, Darcy can feel her pulse racing, flight or fight response kicking in at the sensation of being stalked by a dangerous predator. (”Just nod if you can hear me;”). Code flies by faster, too quick for her eyes to track. Darcy ignores James grunt of concern, her breathes coming quickly, fingers paused, uncertain, on her keyboard. She’s frozen with indecision and fear, doesn’t know if she should approach or run. She doesn’t get the chance to decide.

Her laptop makes a sad sound, and the screen goes blank. (”is there anyone home?”)

Darcy blinks at the computer, and then slumps in her seat, her trembling hands coming to rub at her mouth as she takes deep, gasping breaths. “Damn,” she says emphatically.

“What happened?” barks James, already going for their bags.

“Nothing,” she sighs. “Didn’t work. Or, well, I got something’s attention, but it just shut me down. Oh well, it was a long shot anyways.” She bites at her thumbnail. “Back to the drawing board, I guess. Maybe try the DoD.”

James is still hovering over their bags, anxious and ready to bolt.

“Stark can’t track us, don’t worry. I know how to do that at least.”

Darcy sighs again, and stands to stretch, nerves having pulled her muscles taught. “Might need a new computer, though, I’m not sure what exactly that remote shut down did, might have fried it. And anyways, I don’t think I’d be comfortable using it again, who knows what surprises they left.” She reaches out to shut the lid, and freezes.

The laptop makes a loud “bom” as it kicks back to life.

A conversation box pops up on her screen.

> ADMIN_J: Who is this?

Darcy starts and collapses back into her seat. Did it work? Did her crazy, last ditch idea work?

She knocked and said hello; it wasn’t supposed to work! Except that, obviously, someone (something?) heard her knock and decided to answer.

And now, because she didn’t actually expect anything to come from her little “hello”, she isn’t prepared in the slightest to respond. The sudden injection of adrenalin into her system for the second time that day has her feeling faint and unsteady.

Who is it? She can’t exactly say: “Hello, my name is Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster’s old intern, and I would appreciate it if you handed over any and all files concerning Hydra contained in the Shieldra files you certainly downloaded and stored before erasing them from the internet. I need them so that me and the Winter Soldier can track down and eliminate anyone involved in his decades of brainwashing, please and thank you.” Yeah, no, she doesn’t see that going over well. But, her Baba always told her that any good relationship starts with honesty, and Darcy really doesn’t want whoever (whatever?) protects Stark and SI to find out at a later date that she lied to them (it?) about her identity.

A hundred and one pop culture references fly through her head, but Darcy decides on something older.

> UNKVIS: You can call me Adrestia.
> 
> ADMIN_J: That did not answer my question.
> 
> UNKVIS: Nope. It didn’t. Sorry :P

Darcy leans back in her chair and wonders if teasing the unknown and powerful ADMIN_J is a good idea. Probably not, but Jane isn’t currently around to give her the Disappointed-Big-Sister Look, and James is usually pretty content to let her do her thing, provided she isn’t confronting would-be rapists in back alleys with nothing but her right hook or taunting Hydra goons.

> ADMIN_J: Your methods for gaining my attention are unique, Adrestia. Why have you attempted to breach Stark Industry firewalls and why should I not report you to the nearest authorities?
> 
> UNKVIS: Well, first, I’m pretty sure you don’t know who the nearest authorities are, ADMIN_J, my man.
> 
> ADMIN_J: …
> 
> ADMIN_J: I could find out.
> 
> UNKVIS: Please don’t. Not really keen on catching any attention. We both know that the authorities can’t always be trusted. And, second, I think you and Iron Man will be pretty ok with what I’m up to, and I need your help.

Tony Stark disappeared into the desert with a silver spoon under his tongue and no concept of consequence. Whatever was done to him, whatever he did, a man with iron bones and a sun where his heart had been walked out. Iron Man flouts borders and sovereignty to wreck vengeance on the people who dare twist the work of his own two hands to terror and tragedy. Tony Stark is Iron Man. 

Darcy just hopes that Stark is willing to flout more laws, and let others turn the authors of their tragedies to ashes and dust.


End file.
